Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites

I'll post links here to all my posts about this year's list of returning favorites of mine from past Fringes and past Top 10/Top 20 lists, just so there's a handy place to find them all and you don't have to scroll through the whole blog to find them:

alleged Theatre Company - 3 Guys on State Who Get Hit with Hot Dogs, Snow Cones, etc.

Avi Aharoni - A Play On Words

Denzel Belin - He-Man Is The Devil & Other Satanic Panic Tales

The Coldharts (Nick Ryan) - Silver Hammer

Comedy Suitcase (Joshua English Scrimshaw and Levi Weinhagen) - Bob and Reggie Go To Bed

The Drollery - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

EnCompass Theatre - Shoe Night

Fearless Comedy Productions - What's Your Day Job, or How Capitalism Destroys Us All!

Mahmoud Hakima - It's Going Down In Uptown AND Happy Endings Church: A Haggardly Tale of Woe & Redemption AND Slender Vale (an improvised terror)

Hey Rube! - Orzel Rising 

Les Kurkendaal-Barrett - The Real Black Swann, Confessions of America's First Black Drag Queen

Brad Lawrence - Life Underground

LCcreations (Lily Conforti & Co.) - I Think We Are Supposed To Be "Coming Of Age" By Now 

Gabriel Mata - Joteria: Our Untold Stories...

Maximum Verbosity - Stages: a Horror Play

Tim Mooney - Lot O' Shakespeare

Ariel Pinkerton/Fortune's Fool Theatre - The Hysterical Woman

RE|dance Group - The Biggest Wail From The Bottom Of My Heart

Tom Reed - Erotica for Houseplants

Michael Rogers - Developers

The Shrieking Harpies

Philip Simondet - The Local Music Scene

Snikt! Bamf! Thwip! - Michael Bay's Bridgerton VII: Revenge of the Forlorn

Penny Sterling - ShMILF Life

Mason Tyer and Andrew Rosdail - Peace Retreat, and Neil Gaiman's 'The Wedding Present'

Andrew Erskine Wheeler - Whoosh! The Civil War Mythology of Michael Hickey and His Perilous Precipitation Over St. Anthony Falls

The Winding Sheet Outfit (Amber Bjork) - Arsgang: What You Follow Follows You

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.)

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - The Drollery

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything - The Drollery

Join Chris & Leah, Millennials born in the Twin Cities who were taught they could achieve anything they dream. A three act rock anthem about partying like it’s the end of the world, because it just may be.

Director Matt Alto reached out to me last week to say hello and make sure I had noticed The Drollery had a show in the Fringe this year.  (I did notice, but it never hurts to remind me.)  He mentioned the show this year is “based off a show done at the Edinburgh Fringe fest that I saw in 2017 done by a group called Middle Child from Hull, UK: ‘All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.’ It’s a rock musical about Millennials growing up, but also an Asteroid coming to destroy earth. So it’s pretty out there but probably one of the most crowd pleasing entries The Drollery has done.”  

This would be my second “asteroid coming to destroy earth” Fringe show in recent memory - the last one before the pandemic, I ended up slow dancing with an alien onstage while Louie Armstrong crooned “What A Wonderful World,” so it’s clearly not a genre I have an aversion to.  I’m more than game to see what the Drollery’s take is on a party at the end of the world.

(Side note: It was hard to find useful links to coverage on the The Drollery because they were in my pre-Fringe Top 5 way back in 2008.  Like a lot of these earlier entries, I’ve been finding that I don’t have as strong a trail to follow as I’d been hoping.  The challenge of the reality that small businesses sometimes just go out of business is that sometimes that small business is a web host - and they take your website, your associated email address, and half the archive of your old Fringe reviews with them.  Sigh.  And 20 years ago software and formats were quite different, and it’s hard to remember to upgrade files sometimes as you move from one computer to the next.  But the recent demise of my web host is certainly making me rethink how I preserve the electronic library.  Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way.  This blog started on the Fringe website, and then migrated to Twin Cities Daily Planet, and back in the day I was much more naively confident about the fact that “well, doesn’t everything on the internet just continue to exist forever?  Don’t links remain good and unbroken in perpetuity?”  I did think, wisely, to start backing tings up on the old Blogger platform as well, but it’s an inexact science the further back in time we go.  Needless to say, I have a little rebuilding project ahead of me.  It’s probably all in offline files somewhere, but it’s gonna take some digging.  The archival project clock has begun ticking toward Fringe 2023 now, I guess.)

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - The Coldharts (Nick Ryan)

Silver Hammer - The Coldharts - Nick Ryan

An autobiographical horror-fiction concerning disinformation, non-linear warfare, arson, troll-farms, Russian oligarchs, psychic attacks, tik tok, and our ever-eroding sense of what is true and what is false.

Here again, I don’t really need to tell you to go see The Coldharts' Fringe show, do I?  That’s not a hard sell.  They’ve been producing one touring Fringe show hit after another, and hitting the Twin Cities Horror Fest regularly, too, while they’re at it.  (I think I tagged Nick Ryan from back in his Four Humors days - Top 10, 2006 Fringe - here in the Twin Cities before he moved to New York and started working under the Coldharts label.) As previously stated, not a huge fan of horror, but I am a huge fan of Nick Ryan’s playwriting, so we’ll give it a whirl.  I know I’ll be in good hands, even if I’m completely creeped out.  The genre tags and warnings for this one have another of my favorite labels, the catch-all “Other Divisive Content” - they’ve got ones for violence and weaponry and language and sex and mental illness and politics and religion and queer content but just in case you might be offended by something else completely random, we’ve got that covered, too.  Be prepared to be ticked off about something.  After all, if you’re not offending someone, you might not be doing art correctly, right?
 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

 

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Mason Tyer and Andrew Rosdail

Peace Retreat – New Endeavors - Andy Rakerd

Marital woes + armed assassins = a lousy vacation. Secrets are revealed and tension builds to a violent conclusion in this dark comedy from the producers of The Buttslasher, and Love and Persuasion.

Neil Gaiman’s “The Wedding Present” - Lampstand of the Covenant Productions - Brian Farrey-Latz

Newlyweds Gordon and Bryce receive a mysterious wedding gift: a written description of their married lives that tells the story of a different Gordon and Bryce, living parallel and tragic lives...

Here’s a good example of why it’s helpful to post a listing of the cast and crew of your Fringe show, even if it’s just a list of names and you don’t have anything fancy like character names or bios to go with them.  I’m more likely to put something on my schedule if I know someone involved with the show.  If I don’t know a friend is doing a Fringe show, that extra incentive isn’t there.  For instance, back in 2018, two actors named Andrew Rosdail and Mason Tyer workshopped a scene from a script of mine for a new play showcase.  Thereafter Mason was the driver behind a weird but charming little Fringe show that same year called “Cyrano On The Moon” - it was on my pre-Fringe Top 20 list and I liked it so much I went to see it twice.  This year Andrew Rosdail is in the cast of Neil Gaiman’s “The Wedding Present” and directed a second Fringe show, Peace Retreat.  And the fight choreographer for Peace Retreat is… Mason Tyer.  See how that works?  Small world.

I was already leaning in the direction of The Wedding Present because it was in the LGBTQ+ content group of shows for this year’s Fringe.  Though I like the idea of a gay twist on a story that was originally written as straight, I was a little concerned about whether or not the writer/director had permission to do such a thing.  But their preview cleared that up:




And if I was in the mood for a hostage situation, the preview for Peace Retreat definitely filled that quota for the evening at Fringe previews:

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Snikt! Bamf! Thwip!

Michael Bay’s Bridgerton VII: Revenge of the Forlorn - Snikt! Bamf! Thwip!

(There is no synopsis.  The title is the concept.  In the fine tradition of many a Fringe show, they only finished writing the script last weekend)

Creator Tim Wick thrives on these kind of cultural mash-ups.  Snikt! Bamf! Thwip! landed in my pre-Fringe Top 20 in 2012 for a show entitled The Complete Works of William Shatner (abridged) - so this is what they do.  Channeling the period soap opera of Bridgerton through the lens of director Michael Bay’s action orgies is an amusing idea.  I don’t know how you stage it, but if anyone can, it’s these folks.  They offered a preview in this clash of styles to make their case:
 

 

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

 

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Hey Rube!

Orzel Rising - Hey Rube

No food, no fuel, no country. Having fallen to the Nazis, Poland sends final orders to her last submarine. This is the true story, told using a Fisher-Price submarine, three flashlights, and stage wizardry.

I’m always curious what playwright Marcus Anthony chooses to tackle next, since each of his Fringe shows is unlike any of the others that came before it (it’s why he landed in my pre-Fringe Top 5 back in 2014). He’s constantly pushing the boundaries of what stories he tells and how he decides to tell them.  Here it’s a war story with a kid’s toy submarine and the actors creating the environment they exist in as the plot pushes them forward.  Their Fringe preview was an intriguing sampler:

 

 

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

 

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Fearless Comedy Productions

What’s Your Day Job? Or How Capitalism Destroys Us All! - Fearless Comedy Productions

From the industrial revolution to the apocalypse of tomorrow, follow workers through a series of absurd, comedic vignettes to try and break the constraining capitalist hoops that try and keep workers powerless.

Normally I steer pretty far away from office-based theater, mostly because I go to the theater to escape my day job.  However, this is Fearless Comedy Productions, so I’m willing to give it a look.  They’re devoted to developing new work through their Fearless Five annual new play showcase, short plays around a common theme.  They’ve done a steampunk re-imagining of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and a Shakespearean take on Weekend At Bernie’s.  And they landed in the #1 spot on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list back in 2016 for presenting Duck Washington’s brilliant and heartfelt 5-star comedy Caucasian-Aggressive Pandas and Other Mulatto Tales.  So if I’m going to anyone’s office comedy, it’s probably theirs.  They offered up a scene from it in the Fringe previews this week:
 

 

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Brad Lawrence

Life Underground - Brad Lawrence

A one man show about going deaf in New York using the through line of the city, the subway, as the through line of the story.

Just because of the economics of scale, the Fringe circuit is normally awash in solo shows.  They’re simple to produce, easy to tour, the logistics are just much simpler when you’ve only got one artist to deal with,  But not everybody who tries to do a solo show has something interesting to share, or the skills to tell the story well.  A person who sees a lot of Fringe can see so many bad one-person shows that they could be forgiven for starting to wonder if the genre itself is just a bad idea.  But then, you get lucky and see a good one, or even a great one, and you realize, “Oh!  That’s how you’re supposed to do it!”  Brad Lawrence puts on a great solo show.  He was in my pre-Fringe Top 5 back in 2016 for his one-man show The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, and delivered beyond even my already very high expectations.  And he was great yet again when he returned in 2018 with The Idaho Jackson Action Playset.  I am so happy to see he’s back again with a new show, and I can’t wait to see it.  Whatever I think I’m going to see, I’ll have guessed wrong, and whatever he show he gives me instead is going to make me happy I haven’t given up on Fringe solo shows as an art form.  Artists like Brad Lawrence keep me coming back.

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Philip Simondet

The Local Music Scene - Philip Simondet

An improv show that uses music performed by local musicians as inspiration for improvised scenes. Aug 5: Mitch Ditlefsen, Aug 8: Courtney Yasmineh, Aug 10: Kaity Joan, Aug 13: Dave Dvorak, Aug 14: Mother Banjo

The show description above tells me this is a very different format than the previous Fringe outings that charmed, amused and entertained me from this artist, but if Philip Simondet is the brain’s behind this creation, and it’s once again a mix of music and comedy, I am on board for the ride.  A delightful and amazing Fringe preview from out of nowhere landed his Fringe show Demo Tape at #3 on my pre-Fringe Top Ten list back in 2015 - and when I saw the full show, it did not disappoint.  It’s hard to mix music into a show that isn’t a musical and have it work seamlessly, but Demo Tape, and Simondet’s follow-up in Fringe 2018, the equally dry, droll and self-aware comedy Self-Titled Debut Album, did it brilliantly.  Unlike those previous two Fringe shows, this one is quite literally a completely different show at every performance.  They were presenting this concept regularly at the Bryant Lake Bowl from 2014 right up to the pandemic shutdown, so it's not untested, they definitely know what they're up to here.  Might be enough to lure me back for a second helping.  We’ll see.  But I’m going, and I highly recommend you do, too.  Should be fun.

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Maximum Verbosity

Stages: a Horror Play - Maximum Verbosity

A bickering brother and sister repeatedly awaken in strange scenarios to witness terrible things happening to each other. Why is this happening? Does it matter? Does anything? An expressionistic nightmare about anxiety, loss, madness, love, grief, and table salt.

"A single human intellect is irreplaceably unique. And the destruction of one? Hoo-boy."

I have followed phillip andrew bennett low and Maximum Verbosity on their long and winding Fringe journey since way back with their first Fringe outing in 2004 with Lokasenna (just a year after I started blogging about the Fringe), so I’m not likely to give up now.  phillip is a writer whose love of and way with language never fails to dazzle and intrigue and delight me (#2 on my 2007 pre-Fringe Top Ten list).  Mom was also a huge fan.  And while neither of us normally seek out the creepy or unsettling horror side of the Fringe, if phillip was in charge, we were gonna be in the audience, because we knew we were in good hands - and could normally rely on any Maximum Verbosity production to give us plenty to mull over and discuss afterward.  Heck, he quotes me from a past review so let’s just throw that on the pile:

Of  previous horror from Maximum Verbosity, I say “It positively hums—high energy on a tight leash. It’s a bullet aimed at the dark corners of your brain...sharp as a razor. I marvel at how this thing was put together."

Blurbs from other critics in Indianapolis, Washington, and Chicago are also listed to back me up on that (see their More Information tab)

Be forewarned: there’s adult language, violence and death.  But if it’s based on one of phillip’s stories, I’m always game to give it a try.  I’ll just make sure I’ve got something light and fluffy scheduled for the next couple of slots in my schedule to take the edge off.  His horror stories tend to get under my skin and linger there (which is, of course, the point).


Addendum: they had a Fringe preview

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

 

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Andrew Erskine Wheeler

Whoosh! The Civil War Mythology of Michael Hickey and His Perilous Precipitation Over St. Anthony Falls - Andrew Erskine Wheeler (Wheeler in the Sky)

An ‘Homerical Poem’ of memory, art and healing as Minnesota veterans of the Civil War return home.
From the creator of the 2019 Golden Lanyard Award-winning Booth’s Ghost
2022 MN Fringe Charlie Bethel Solo Artist’s Grant
Music by The Lost Forty
Directed by Allison Vincent

This is another one that I really don’t have to say much other than “Andrew Erskine Wheeler has created a new solo show,” and that’s all anyone needs to sign off on making it part of their schedule.  There aren’t a lot of details but I don’t need them.  For me, his name always first conjures up memories of that amazing Walking Shadow production of The Christians, which is what easily landed him on the pre-Fringe top 20 for me back in 2017.  But most folks in the Fringe orbit probably better remember him for the last time he did a solo show of his own creation, the last time we got to have a live Fringe before the pandemic.  Of his 2019 Fringe hit Booth’s ghost I wrote: “new (hell, ALL) actors and writers, take note; THIS is how you do it; how you create different characters with only one person, how you use and fill a space w/your voice and presence; how you tell a story - 5 stars.”  And I stand by all that.  Looking forward to seeing what Andrew has up his sleeve this time. 

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

 

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - The Shrieking Harpies

The Shrieking Harpies

The Shrieking Harpies are a musical improv trio featuring Lizzie Gardner, Taj Ruler, Hannah Wydeven, and with Justin Nellis on the keys. Our show blends musical genres into an improvised story, with a focus on feminism and friendship. No musical styling or genre is untouchable!

As someone who focuses (I will grant you) a little too obsessively on every peculiar wrinkle of the Fringe website when I’m doing my homework, I find humor in odd things sometimes.  For instance, that description above doesn’t fit on the Fringe website because it’s too long.  So, as I’m sure the Fringe site/publicity gurus probably warn all the artists, the description just gets cut off when it reaches the word limit.

So here, it suddenly ends with, “Our show blends musical genres into an improvised story, with a focus on…”

Yes?  A focus on what?  I don’t find that frustrating, I found it unintentionally very amusing.

And because the internet is full of information, I found their website, and what do you know?  There on the front page is their standard description of what they do, which is the same wording, only they don’t have a word limit on their own site, so they continue with…

“…a focus on feminism and friendship. No musical styling or genre is untouchable!”

Whoops, sorry feminism and friendship, you’re cut off!  And though “no musical styling or genre is untouchable,” apparently the standard synopsis is quite touchable and gets lopped off as well.  (See?  I do find amusement in the silliest minutiae sometimes.)

Mom and I really enjoyed the strangeness and inventive whimsy of a fully improvised musical both in 2017 (when they were on my pre-Fringe Top 20) and 2018 (her last two Fringes), so it will be nice to revisit this group again.  Improv comedy is already impressive when it’s done well.  Adding the musical degree of difficulty to the proceedings just makes it doubly impressive (and fun), when done well.  And The Shrieking Harpies do it very well.  You should check them out.

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - Tim Mooney

Lot o’ Shakespeare - Tim Mooney

Tim Mooney revives his hit play from the 2010 MN Fringe: one monologue from EVERY Shakespeare play, Bingo Style, with PRIZES! “His delivery sparkles” (Star Tribune) “Sit back and be dazzled.” (tcdailyplanet)

I somehow missed this one back in 2010 (or my memory is so foggy it’s gotten mixed up with other Shakespeare-themed Fringe shows of the past - not just Tim’s, there are MANY others, it’s why one of the search options on the Fringe site allows you to filter for “Shakespearian elements”).  He's got a fun video on his show page to give you a sampler.  Random Shakespeare monologue bingo sounds like a nice change of pace as part of the schedule some day.  And last year’s virtual one-man show, Breakneck Comedy of Errors, was so enjoyable that I’m totally down for some live Shakespeare from Mooney again this year.  As I said last year, all of this is “harder than he makes it look,” so go watch Tim toss some Shakespeare around for an hour and make it look easy.  Like a lot of us, he’s been plugging along on virtual platforms for a couple of years now, waiting for the real thing to return, so I’m sure he’ll be having even more fun than usual up on that stage again.  And his enthusiasm gets transmitted to the audience, so we’re all getting a kick out of it.

 

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)

 

Fringe 2022 - Returning Favorites - EnCompass Theatre

Shoe Night - EnCompass Theatre

For years, Norah has repeatedly imagined what she might say to her ex who cruelly ghosted her. A quick stop for new shoes, therefore, becomes an opportune moment when she spots him across the aisle.

EnCompass Theatre is one of those outliers on my pre-Fringe Top 20 lists where I was intrigued by what their show was about and the way they marketed it, fully intended to go, and then the vagaries of Fringe scheduling were such that I ultimately ended up missing it.  Now, this was back in 2019 (the last pre-pandemic Fringe, and my first without Mom), so I was a bit distracted, and frankly a little surprised I made it all the way from the beginning to the end of the festival.  Shock and numbness can be useful defenses that the brain and body deploy for one’s benefit.

At any rate, I’m sorry I didn’t link up with this theater the first time around, so I’m going to see if I can rectify that this Fringe.  I do enjoy a new play at Fringe time.  Their More Information tab offers some further elaboration about the story:

"In the modern dating world, ghosting has become a regular occurrence for early relationships. But what happens when a partner of significance disappears without explanation? New Twin Cities playwright Kelsey Norton brings to the stage the lasting consequences of this behavior and to offer us the closure few are rarely given.
 
Brought to you by EnCompass Theatre, winner of Arts Reader’s 2019 Fringe Editor’s Pick Award"

(And just in case we need a definition, they offer that as well:)
"Ghost-ing: the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication."

(You can click on the following links to see a set of links to the full Top 10 list, the Top 11-20 list, a list of returning favorites, and the full coverage of the 2022 Fringe on this blog.) 

(Side note: Also during Fringe season, Minnesota has a primary election coming up on August 9th.  Early voting options are currently available.  You can also check out what's on your ballot ahead of time on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, as well as other voting services and information.  In Minneapolis, not only do we have the Governor and Lt. Governor on the ballot, but there's our U.S. Congressional Rep., our MN State Senator, the MN Secretary of State and MN Attorney General, as well as our County Sheriff and County Attorney, and two members of the Minneapolis School Board.  These are the people who decide what laws we live under and how they get enforced.  These are the people who decide whether or not we have voting rights.  These are the people who decide how our kids learn.  This is how we change things.  Personally, I'm alternately furious and despairing that my goddaughter and her little sister now have fewer rights over their own bodies than they did a month ago - there are things we can do, voting in the primary (and the general election) is one of them - here's a place you can go to do more.)